Critics of the broadband stimulus project question why the state spent money on unnecessary equipment and failed to identify anchor institutions that already had adequate service.

Another round of miscalculations by project managers overseeing a $126.3 million federal broadband stimulus grant nearing expiration will cost nearly half of West Virginia’s anchor institutions their promised fiber broadband connections.

As a consolation prize, state officials are promising those left out will receive new routers paid for by federal taxpayers whether the institutions want them or not.

As the deadline nears for West Virginia to finish spending their 2010 federal broadband grant, the state has been on a spending spree. Just last week, officials designated 175 new sites as “community anchor institutions” qualified for upgraded Internet service. But the Charleston Gazette found just seven of them will receive fiber broadband upgrades. The rest are getting expensive routers that the state has been trying to unload for nearly two years or new routers the state will spend additional grant funds to purchase.

Among the top vendors paid with grant funds: Frontier Communications, which provides connectivity, and Verizon Communications, the company that supplied the overpowered routers.

“Due to the amount of time required for environmental assessments and fiber builds, we determined that we would limit most of the additional sites to ‘router-only’ so that we could complete the build on time,” Diane Holley-Brown, a spokeswoman for the state Office of Technology told the newspaper.

The state defended its decision to scale back on fiber upgrades pointing out many of the institutions targeted already had the service. That left the state scurrying to find new projects for unspent grant funds.

The state’s latest award of Internet routers is separate from the earlier revelation West Virginia had over-purchased equipment that either proved unnecessary or duplicated equipment already installed.

Eric Eyre’s watchdog reporting in the Charleston Gazette over how the state’s $100+ million broadband grant has been spent has triggered a federal and state investigation.

In 2011, then Gov. Joe Manchin promised that federal broadband stimulus funding would provide fiber connectivity to 1,064 schools, libraries, public safety and health care institutions. When the project funding expires at the end of January, only 639 institutions will be slated to receive fiber upgrades.

Schools are among the hardest hit institutions. At least 60 percent of those promised upgraded Internet service will only receive a new router instead.

The project has remained under scrutiny since the Gazette revealed $24 million of the grant was spent on 1,064 Cisco routers that were never intended for use at many of the institutions targeted to receive them. Hundreds of the $20,000+ routers were stored, unused, in state buildings for at least two years waiting for a new home.

The U.S. Department of Commerce’s Inspector General and West Virginia Legislative Auditor are reviewing the router purchase.

When the grant expires West Virginia officials have made it clear those institutions left without fiber upgrades should not hold their breath waiting for the state to pick up where the federal government left off. The reason? The grant money is nearly gone and the state is not interested in financing additional upgrades.

Google Voice and its long distance calling service will be free for another year according to the company’s blog.

Google said it would extend its free North American long distance service through the end of 2013, and added it maintains very aggressive international calling rates.

Google’s phone service provides a free local phone number, free domestic calling, and offers free texting via an online application. Sprint customers can fully integrate the service with their smartphones while other carriers support the service less elegantly with an add-on app.

The service competes primarily with Microsoft’s Skype.

Wyden

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) has introduced legislation that would force Internet Service Providers to prove usage caps are designed to manage network congestion instead of monetizing consumer data usage.

The Data Cap Integrity Act would require the Federal Communications Commission to enact new rules forcing providers to justify their usage cap programs, create standards by how ISPs measure usage and to provide useful measurement tools to customers before they incur overlimit fees.

“Internet use is central to our lives and to our economy,” said Wyden. “Future innovation will undoubtedly require consumers to use more and more data — data caps should not impede this innovation and the jobs it creates.  This bill is intended to help consumers manage their data more effectively and ensure that data caps are used only to serve the legitimate purpose of addressing congestion.”

Wyden’s bill is an attempt to force providers to prove their contention that usage limits improve the user experience by preventing so-called “data hogs” from slowing down connections of other paying customers.

Wyden is also concerned that without uniform standards of data measurement, consumers could be blindsided with overlimit fees or even have their service cut off. In the past, providers have stuck customers with a variety of often inaccurate measurement tools that have under or over-reported usage, which can sometimes lead to higher bills. At present, no government agency has authority over the veracity of provider measurement tools, and most ISPs impose terms requiring subscribers to accept their word as final for the purpose of usage measurement.

The Oregon senator’s bill is the first measure regulating usage caps introduced in the Senate. In 2009, Rep. Eric Massa (D-N.Y.) introduced a measure in the House that would have banned most usage caps and usage-based billing without first applying a means test. Massa introduced the bill after Time Warner Cable attempted to impose a usage-billing scheme on customers in his district, which includes parts of the Rochester area.

Among the provisions in Wyden’s bill the FCC must enact and enforce within one year of its passage:

• A “truth in labeling requirement” that requires ISPs fully disclose the cost of their services, the true upload and download speed a customer will receive, and the presence of any speed throttles or usage limits;
• A ban on usage caps for any provider that cannot prove they are needed to control congestion and not simply discourage Internet usage;
• A penalty for providers that either do not provide suitable measurement tools or inaccurately measure usage leading to unjustified overlimit fees;
• A provider may not exempt certain content from its usage cap while imposing it on others.

Lyons

Wyden’s bill was introduced at the same time the nation’s largest cable lobbying group, the National Cable and Telecommunications Association, sponsored an event defending usage limits and consumption billing. Two of the three experts speaking at the event declared peak usage limits or congestion pricing ineffective.

In fact, Michael Weinberg from Public Knowledge took note of the fact the cable industry now seems to admit it does not have a congestion problem:

“The most refreshing section of the [NCTA’s] study is the one that is not there,” Weinberg wrote. “There is no meaningful discussion of usage-based pricing as a tool to reduce network congestion or a suggestion that monthly data limits are a reasonable way to impact congestion. There is also no invocation of the mythical ‘data hog,’ a sinful creature that can only be punished with data caps. Hopefully, the omission is NCTA’s tacit admission of two things: that cable networks are not congested and, if they become so in the future, monthly caps will do little to address that congestion.

”

“I don’t think congestion is as big a problem in fixed broadband,” said Professor David M. Lyons of Boston College Law School at the NCTA event. “The latest broadband speed surveys that the FCC has come out suggests that there is not a whole lot of slowdown at peak periods on the fixed side.”

(Broadband Reports/User: “compuguybna”)

If you are a Charter Cable customer looking to make some changes to your service, watch your bill because Charter may charge you up to $3 for the cost of doing business.

They label it the “Change of Service Computerized Fee.”

Broadband Reports found the fine print for the inconsistent fee, despite it not appearing on Charter’s website. A number of customers learned about it only recently because the cable operator informed customers it was going up by $1 effective Feb. 8.

Many customers report the fee does not always get levied after interacting with a customer service representative, but should it find its way to your bill, the company will usually reverse it if customers call and complain.

Cable operators have adjusted to the reality of slightly higher levels of competition by advertising lower prices but piling on junk fees and surcharges that can further raise customer bills. In 2012, new fees for cable modem rental, bill payment service fees, increases in returned check charges, and other surcharges have been introduced by several companies.

Some satellite companies also charge as much as $5 to upgrade or downgrade service.

Cable subscribers in Natchez, Miss. are scratching their heads wondering why AT&T will neither confirm nor deny whether its fiber to the neighborhood U-verse service is coming to a neighborhood near them.

AT&T says if it told customers where the service was coming, it would give away vital information to its competition — the cable and satellite companies.

AT&T spokeswoman Sue Sperry says her competitors will stop at nothing to hang onto current customers, even if it means using predatory below-market-rate pricing.

“We’ve learned from experience that if they know what our footprint is, they go in and do retention offers and pretty much give their service away for next to nothing and then we can’t compete,” Sperry told the Natchez Democrat.

But considering its biggest competitor is locally-hated Cable One, a lot of customers would still be ready to switch even if AT&T sent the cable company its detailed business plans in advance.

“Unless you spend your weekends at the Bondage Bordello, there is nothing enjoyable about dealing with Cable One in Mississippi,” says Stop the Cap! reader DeWayne. “Last summer when their system went up and died on the folks over in Columbus, even the guy running it couldn’t tell when it was coming back.”

Top secret.

DeWayne started reading Stop the Cap! when we covered Cable One’s massive failure in August 2012 that brought all of its services in Columbus down while the company incredibly waited for express delivery of a replacement part. When customers could not get answers from Cable One over the phone, they lined up outside the local cable office only to learn from company general manager David Lusby he had no idea how many customers were affected by the outage or when the cable system would be back up and running.

“I hate AT&T but I hate Cable One more,” DeWayne said. “It is annoying that they won’t tell us when U-verse is coming to our neighborhood.”

Sperry claims AT&T U-verse is more robust than cable or satellite because it is powered by phone lines.

“That was one of the things during the hurricane, U-verse didn’t go out,” she told the newspaper. “It’s delivered through a phone line, and the phones are the last to go out.”

But unfortunately for customers, AT&T says it only rolls out U-verse in “a measured and slow way,” forcing customers to continually visit att.com and manually check availability using their home address.

But Sperry told the newspaper once customers get the service, they remain loyal to it. That may be especially true in smaller communities in Mississippi that cope with second rate cable operators not known for offering robust or affordable service.